ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Polit. Sci.
Sec. Political Participation
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpos.2025.1580687
This article is part of the Research TopicPost-pandemic democratic innovation: transparency, citizen behavior and decision-makingView all 5 articles
Diagnosis of the Digitalization of Intraparty Democracy in Southern European Political Parties
Provisionally accepted
- Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
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The purpose of this study is to diagnose levels of intraparty digital democracy on Southern European political parties’ official websites and digital platforms. To this end, an intraparty digital democracy index has been developed to measure intraparty digital democracy beyond the scope of candidate selection and general participation, using the variables established by the Varieties of Democracy index as a reference. In this way, it is possible to determine whether the digitalization of parties is truly altering parties’ behaviours towards, and interactions with, members, based on the premise that democratization involves different costs, trade-offs, and challenges (Fitzpatrick, 2021). This has led us to ask which dimensions are undergoing the most digitalization, why this is and, whether the origin of the parties becomes a determining factor for greater democratization of these.
Keywords: Political parties, Intraparty democracy, digitalization, Southern Europe, Digital
Received: 20 Feb 2025; Accepted: 19 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Sánchez Medero. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Gema Sánchez Medero, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
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